Let me clarify – To me that means Chewy, doughy, soft, chocolatey, buttery, salty awesomeness. Its crazy how much baking truly is an art and takes practice and experimentation to get the “results” that you are looking for. Plenty of flour, sugar, butter and love have went into (and spritzed around) my kitchen lately as I’m determined to create my own favorite recipe!

Not all cookies are created equal! There is RARELY a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is identical to another one. I have a few “go to” recipes for cookies, but lately I have been trying different combinations of the elements that go into the ingredients in different combinations in order to find my perfect one.

This will likely be a series of blog posts – but here is a start!

First Ingredient… BUTTER – and more specifically…UNSALTED butter. Unsalted butter is used so that you can control the amount of butter in the recipe. Every brand of butter is different and no two sticks are for surely the same amount…so in order to maintain control… Unsalted it is! I buy my butter at Costco and store extras in the freezer!

Now – melted or softened to room temp???

The above cookie is made with semi melted butter…meaning that some of the stick was melted, but the rest of the stick remained shaped, but soft. There are also recipes that call for just “room temperature” butter – Meaning leave the butter out long enough so that when you press on it, your finger leaves an imprint.  I have NOT had the best results with using butter this way as I felt that cookies were too “tough” for my taste.

Browned butter is another technique I use fairly often when baking. To brown butter you add the butter to a saute pan that is set on the stove top to medium/low. Let the butter melt while stirring it and it will eventually start to bubble and foam. Keep a close eye on the butter so that it doesn’t start to burn..but starts to turn a golden color with flecks and you will notice a toffee like smell (mmm…) Remember to stir continuously! Once it reaches that beautiful golden color remove the pan from the burner and pour the butter into a glass bowl to let cool for about 15 minutes before adding to your cookie recipe. You don’t want it to be piping hot or boiling when you add it!

Butter Winner = Browned butter melted or just melted unsalted butter

Next element: sugar .. or I mean sugarS. I like a CHEWY cookie so I use more brown sugar than white granulated sugar – Like a 2:1 ratio. In my cookie recipe I have been using 1 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar. Make sure your brown sugar is packed into the cup tightly! I tend to go with the light brown sugar, but there is also dark brown sugar which contains more molasses giving it a more distinct flavor. Some recipe call for equal parts brown and white sugar and some even do that more white sugar than brown – those are going to be your crispier cookies –

Sugar winner: 1 cup packed brown sugar and 1/2 cup white granulated sugar

Next element… eggs! Eggs also have many options! I use a large size egg for all of my baking. Most recipe call for two whole eggs. My favorite? 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk. These make the most moist cookies! (sorry..I hate that word too!) Another tip – make sure your eggs are room temperature. Warm butter + cold eggs ay = scrambled eggs….ISH! – to hurry up this process I add my eggs to a bowl and fill it with hot water and let them sit for about 5-10 minutes before adding to my cookie dough.

Egg winner = 1 whole large egg + 1 large egg yolk

Ok … enough for today! Next round I’ll go into vanilla and the elements that make cookies puffy and/or chewy!

What are your thoughts on these elements that go into cookies?
​Any opinions on butter, sugar and eggs?